Word: frontier
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...some time now, that religion has been corroded by doubt. Intractable inflation seems to have turned the good life into a treadmill and has shaken our confidence in the future?America's last frontier. Our industry appears to have lost its productive magic, its daring, and sometimes even its competence. Our Government is intrusive, inept?and expensive. Our democracy too often produces only mediocrity and deadlock...
...last forever in a land whose central idea from the first Pilgrim landfall onward has been physical and spiritual renewal, the fresh start, the future in which literally anything is possible. Often in their history Americans have returned to that theme of vigorous dawn departures-physically to the frontier, spiritually in the Great Awakening, socially through the immense renovation of the New Deal...
Banuri began "doing something" when, after college, he entered the Pakistani civil service to begin training to become a district magistrate. It was as magistrate of a district subdivision that Banuri sometimes played the role of frontier-town sheriff, taking the law into his own hands. But his duties were more diverse and demanding than simple law enforcement, for he was "the only representative of the government" in outlying tribal areas...
Stationed in the Malakand subdistrict, Banuri found the lifestyle similar to what he had seen in westerns as a child. He recalls that he once mistook a film of the American west for the Pakistani frontier. The people have similar attitudes about survival, and they rely mainly on themselves--"We have a very individual culture. When you grow up you are told you must safeguard your own rights...
After spending two years in the magistracy, he transferred to the planning division of the government of the province of the North-western Frontier because "power is seductive. It warps your personality. You become paternalistic and high-handed...